A "Kind" Master's Share of Christianity

A planter’s influence of his servants, self-proclaimed kind-heartedness, and religious justification, June, 1752,

Surely there should be no shame in Christ Jesus, even on the terms of servitude. It sits as no secret in my household that the barbarous trade of African men and women is one of brutality and inhumanity. Nor is it unknown that the common man performs a disservice to his workers. From what I know, their voyages across the great Atlantic consist of the most terrible of illnesses and the common ringing of death. I do not identify with such a beastly number nor am I in the support of it. The addle-pated sailors think nothing of their unwilling captors, unlike myself. Instead, I treat my servants with a proud standard of respect. Such respect permits them the knowledge, or, perhaps, obligation, of a Christian faith.

Near my property is a house of worship which I, being strong in morality, attend regularly. Most recently, our minister proclaimed a statement of high controversy: allowing Negro servants to experience Christ to share the gospel with them. I, like my brothers and sisters in Christ, found uncertainty in the idea, but accepted it as Christ-like. And so, upon the following Sunday morning all of my workers dawned their finest fabric and began the journey, by foot, to the house of worship. Of the bunch of Negroes who tend to the stock that embrace loyalty through Christian faith, some tell me of their experience. They return the minister’s words, he tells them that they truly do have not only a Father but a Great Friend in Heaven. Though they be slaves, the work that they do on the sinful Earth is the most righteous of work and that they shall receive a just wager for it in the Father’s utopia. The minister, withholding wisdom copiously, preached to an exclusive Negro congregation that when they serve their master, they are serving God. After hearing of such beautiful words, I permitted their travel to another sermon, and another. After this, their work in the fields became joyous! As opposed to standard dreadful silence and uneasy groans, I now witness, by both eye and ear, gleeful hymnals and the most harmonious of sound. I have no fears that my obedient workers would revert their newfound liberties to thwarting my amorous gestures. They, by my loving and gentle hand, receive only the best of food, agreeable rest, and plentiful water in the Floridian sun. Rarely, if at all, must they quiver in fear of my hand as lashings only come to the blatantly disobedient. Once in a little while I find it that I must remind them that their present condition is one of good will, and that I apply far more generosity than that of the men who obsess over world-wide trade – the love of money.

I have done the Good Lord’s work – sharing the gospel even to my Negro servants. I have chosen not to do as other cruel men do to their Negroes in torturing them with hot wax, dismemberment, branding, and the like. To my workers, discipline comes only through the occasional whip. Unlike the evil planter, I share the blood of Jesus with the illiterate Negro servant and bless him with the freedom of Godly love! Shame on those who prevent any man from knowing such love!

Sources: Davis, David Brion. Inhuman Bondage: the Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Bacon, Thomas. Two Sermons Preached to a Congregation of Black Slaves at the Parish Church of S.P. In the province of Maryland (London: John Oliver, 1749).